


incandescence

by asynchrony



Series: nothing's been the same [1]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Do not read this without watching the movie, F/M, Iron Man 3 Spoilers, POV Second Person, Podfic Available, Post-IM3, brief allusion to rape
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-05
Updated: 2013-05-05
Packaged: 2017-12-10 10:35:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/785075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asynchrony/pseuds/asynchrony
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nothing's been the same since Iron Man 3.</p><p>Pepper reflects on this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	incandescence

Nothing’s been the same since Extremis.

You experience things, and then they’re over – but they’re just as surely with you for the rest of your life, fear and adrenalin becoming just as absolute a part of your biology as the fire under your skin which took apart and reforged your body.

You can’t help but wonder if violence is part of your makeup now, if there’s another reason all the Extremis-transformed soldiers were so willing to play along, if the bloodlust that flared in you when you fell those hundred metres into the inferno below only to see your torturer about to kill your boyfriend (is that even what he is, is there even a word for him other than your _Tony_ ), if all that is now as irrevocably a part of who you are as Tony’s heritage of slaughter is part of him.

You understand Tony in a way you never did, you guess. (You wonder if he understands now how devastating it is to always have to watch him fight and fall.) The way he constantly woke up gasping with the ragged blue maw of the wormhole fringing his vision is just the same for you, now, superheated air whistling around you and nanotech within your veins, charring you from within and without, and he has to shake you awake or get you out of bed before the sheets catch fire.

He sleeps on the couch, now. You've both aged enough in that one week to value that small illusion of privacy, of control, but it’s still sad in a mostly symbolic way that what should have drawn the two of you closer together has had the practical effect of making it unsafe to do so.

He works on Extremis instead of his suits, but it’s the same, it’s the same obsessive neglect of all other things, just that this time it’s focused on fixing _you_. You’re not sure how to feel about that, either.

You want to live, of course, but you’re not sure if you’re really alive any more, if you’re flesh and blood, and maybe part of that is the same hysteria that you had when you realized what Tony’d done with the Mk.42. In hindsight it’d been the only logical conclusion after all his talk with _“the suit and I are one”_ and _“I am Iron Man”_ ; what better way to realize that than to fuse the physical with the metaphorical? It saved his life, and yours, so you shouldn't complain, but everything about this is so surreal and so crazy and thinking about it all (you were supposed to just be a personal assistant, god _damn_ it) will bring back visions of licking flames and gray steel and the visceral way Killian was deep inside you, consuming you, even without ever making good on the lust clear in his eyes, and all you want is to have _one piece of normalcy_ ,

and being unsure whether to feel angry or concerned about Tony Stark will have to be it. 

 

It’s taken you through all these years, from bullet holes to drones to nukes to human bombs, after all.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] incandescence](https://archiveofourown.org/works/789252) by [asynchrony](https://archiveofourown.org/users/asynchrony/pseuds/asynchrony)




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